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This engaging introduction to the latest theoretical advances and experimental discoveries in elementary particle physics, culminating in the development of the 'Standard Model', makes this fascinating subject accessible to undergraduate students and aims at motivating them to study it further.
List of contents
- 1: Introduction
- 2: Quantisation of the Electromagnetic Field and Spontaneous Photon Emission
- 3: Elements of Classical Field Theory
- 4: Scattering in Classical and Quantum Physics
- 5: Elements of Group Theory
- 6: Particle Physics Phenomenology
- 7: Relativistic Wave Equations
- 8: Towards a Relativistic Quantum Mechanics
- 9: From Classical to Quantum Mechanics
- 10: From Classical to Quantum Fields: Free Fields
- 11: Interacting Fields
- 12: Scattering in Quantum Field Theory
- 13: Gauge Interactions
- 14: Spontaneously Broken Symmetries
- 15: The Principles of Renormalisation
- 16: The Electromagnetic Interactions
- 17: Infrared Effects
- 18: The Weak Interactions
- 19: A Gauge Theory for the Weak and Electromagnetic Interactions
- 20: Neutrino Physics
- 21: The Strong Interactions
- 22: The Standard Model and Experiment
- 23: Beyond the Standard Model
- Free
About the author
John Iliopoulos is a Director of Research Emeritus at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. He has taught on many introductory courses in Theoretical Physics, including Quantum Field Theory and the Theory of Elementary Particles, at the École Normale Supérieure and the École Polytechnique as well as in various Schools and Universities. In 1970, in collaboration with Sheldon Glashow and Luciano Maiani, he predicted the existence of the charm quark and proposed the GIM mechanism, an important step in the construction of the Standard Model. He also contributed to the development of supersymmetry, with Bruno Zumino and Pierre Fayet. He has received many awards, including the Ricard Prize of the French Physical Society, the Sakurai Prize of the American Physical Society, the High Energy Physics Prize of the European Physical Society and the Dirac Medal.
Following his PhD at Harvard University, Theodore Tomaras worked as research associate at CalTech and junior faculty at Rockefeller University, before joining the University of Crete, Greece, where he is now Professor of Physics Emeritus. He has taught many undergraduate and postgraduate courses, on elementary particle physics, quantum field theory, and gravitation and cosmology. He has contributed to the study of magnetic monopoles in GUT models, to the physics beyond the Standard Model, to the study of solitons in High Energy and Condensed Matter Physics, and to astroparticle physics. He has served as Head of the Department of Physics and of the Institute of Theoretical and Computational Physics of the University of Crete for several years, and was recently honoured with the 'S. Pihorides Award for Exceptional University Teaching'.
Summary
This engaging introduction to the latest theoretical advances and experimental discoveries in elementary particle physics, culminating in the development of the 'Standard Model', makes this fascinating subject accessible to undergraduate students and aims at motivating them to study it further.
Additional text
This is an excellent introduction, at an advanced undergraduate level, to the physics of elementary particles and their mutual interactions. Unlike many books in this subject, it starts from a historical and experimental perspective to illustrate how the present theoretical framework, the Standard Model, came about through a long and fascinating bottom-up process. The book will play an important role in inspiring undergraduate students to undertake graduate studies, or perhaps a career, in theoretical (or experimental) high energy physics.
